Apple Is Going to Make Texting on an Android Phone Less Lame
I’m very pleased to tell you that the iPhone battle between blue and green bubbles is coming to an end, or at least changing the stakes significantly. Apple today announced that it will support the RCS text messaging standard starting late next year. Once Apple updates your iPhone to support RCS, texting an Android user won’t be such a pain. In fact, it may seem like they have their own iPhone.
I doubt Apple can make this transition as easy as we’d like, and there will be growing pains. But this is huge news: not only will you be able to enjoy texting your friends on Android again, but you might not feel so obligated to stick with iOS when it’s time to upgrade your phone.
What is RKS?
RCS stands for Rich Communication Services and is a messaging protocol similar to iMessage. However, unlike iMessage, RCS is brand agnostic. If your smartphone and carrier support RCS, you can use it to message other people.
However, like iMessage, RCS is a feature-rich messaging solution. With it, you can send high-quality photos and videos with virtually no compression; see when someone is typing; use read receipts to confirm that a message has been opened; send messages over a cellular or Wi-Fi network; access to group chats with features such as group names, editing and the ability to leave a group; and most importantly, know that your messages are protected with end-to-end encryption.
These features are not innovative. They’ve been part of feature-rich messaging platforms for years, from WhatsApp to iMessage. But this is not a criticism of RCS: there is nothing new in the platform. It’s been around in one form or another since 2007, and came to Android back in 2019. Apple was just late in adding support for it.
Good riddance, SMS.
SMS, short for Short Message Service, and MMS, short for Multimedia Messaging Service, were great as we texted back and forth from our flip phones. SMS allows you to send simple text messages, while MMS supports simple photo and video sharing, which means the media is transmitted in compressed form and in low quality. But times have changed, and the fact that SMS is still so common is a shame. From text size restrictions to media compression to the lack of any text formatting features, this protocol has almost no place in today’s smartphone world.
The worst part is that it is extremely unsafe. SMS is not end-to-end encrypted, so sending text messages using this protocol puts your privacy and security at risk. In recent years, Android manufacturers have been pushing users away from SMS as RCS adoption has been going well. But, of course, there is one company that does not cooperate.
Blue bubbles vs green bubbles
Until now, Apple has offered iPhone users two built-in messaging solutions: If you send messages to other iPhones, you get iMessage and all its great features. However, if you send a text message on an Android phone, you’re stuck with SMS, an old, outdated messaging protocol that only makes things worse. Images look like garbage, you can’t tell when someone is typing, group chats crash, and the entire conversation can be intercepted by a skilled hacker.
Apple knows that SMS offers a worse experience than iMessage and uses this fact to promote its own platform: if you don’t want to ruin your group chat, you’re better off buying an iPhone. That’s why each message type is color-coded: blue bubbles (iMessage) are good, green bubbles (SMS) are bad.
While it doesn’t matter what phone someone has, in practice this strategy works, especially with younger smartphone users. This study found that 87% of teens own an iPhone, and 88% say an iPhone will be their next smartphone. Android isn’t cool for kids, and while there are a lot of factors going into this trend, a big part probably comes down to the color of your message bubble and all the baggage that comes with it.
Finding a solution
For years, Apple was happy with this situation. After all, this is what makes people buy an iPhone. (This is not speculation, by the way: Apple deliberately does not include iMessage on Android in order to increase its sales. As Apple senior vice president Craig Federighi wrote in an internal email in 2016 , “iMessage on Android will simply serve to remove [an] barrier to iPhone families giving their children Android phones.”)
Seeing no consolation, people searched for a solution for years. Third-party companies like Sunbird and Beeper have recently offered apps that bridge this gap by allowing Android users to appear as blue bubbles on their friends’ iPhone devices. They even offer features similar to iMessage, such as end-to-end message encryption. But these platforms are inherently insecure because they require you to sign in to one of their remote Macs using your Apple ID.
What the future of iPhone messaging might look like
Of course, Apple’s adoption of RCS nullifies these third-party solutions. Starting late next year, sending text messages to an Android phone won’t be as painful as it is today. It’s also not out of the goodness of Apple’s heart: the company is likely getting ahead of EU rules that require platforms to offer cross-platform messaging . The company added USB-C to the iPhone 15 for the same reason. Thank you, Europe!
But while Apple is under pressure to do the right thing, there’s no reason to believe the company will make the experience perfect. The introduction of RCS is different from the iMessage offering on Android, and Apple knows it. In all likelihood, Apple will still be as clear as possible when you communicate with a non-Apple user. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company keeps green bubbles as a simple indicator. Sure, you might see typing indicators and group chats might work better, but the messages will still be green . They’ll probably also limit as many iMessage features as possible in RCS chats – don’t expect a big FaceTime button to appear when messaging Android friends, even though you can technically already use FaceTime with them .
Whatever Apple ultimately does to make iMessage still seem like the best messaging solution doesn’t matter. RCS as a standard is much better than SMS and will be more than enough to bridge the gap between device types. I doubt most people will care if the bubbles are green if they can easily manage a group chat without resorting to third party options like WhatsApp or Messenger. While Generation Z may care about aesthetics, Generation Alpha will grow up in a different world. Maybe they’ll break the cycle, at least here in the US (by the way, no one outside of America cares. The rest of the world uses third party apps like WhatsApp. It’s kind of like we’re the only idiots who haven’t adopted metric system.)
This change will also free up your choice of smartphone. Of course, you can continue to use the iPhone if you like everything else in the Apple ecosystem. But if you don’t mind losing easy access to FaceTime, this change means you can try the Pixel 8 Pro or even a cool foldable phone , knowing your iPhone friends won’t hate you for disrupting your messaging.
This is good news, guys. Whether you’re Team iPhone or Team Android, we all have a lot to be grateful for.